I shrug and grab the box from the pantry before walking across the room and setting them on the floor in front of the fire. “I liked taking my clothes off in front of you.”
“Yeah, I remember.” Colt’s soft laugh causes my insides to stir. “You particularly enjoyed trying to get me killed.”
There’s a blanket box at the end of the bed and I’m almost afraid to open it because I have seen Fifty Shades—and based on the duct tape, the nonperishable snacks, and the salve in the bathroom, I’m pretty sure my brother is the gay equivalent of Christian Grey. I have no desire to freeze to death in the middle of a tornado though, so I open Pandora’s box. A literal dick-ton of sex toys stare back at me. Yep. Wyatt is one kinky fucker. There are blankets though and I pull them out and toss one to Colt. “I’m game if you are.”
“I never had any problems being naked around you, Lemonade.”
“I remember.”
He raises a brow and his hands fly to his belt buckle. He unbuckles it and his eyes glide to mine. “You gonna watch?”
“Maybe.”
“What if I said you lost the right to watch me undress when you walked out on me?”
“I’d tell you it’s a little late for that, isn’t it? Or did you forget about the night in your cabin after you dragged me kicking and screaming from Earl’s.”
He nods like I’ve made a fair point. “I could never forget,” he whispers. “But I tell you what, Lemonade, why don’t you start? Ladies first and all that.”
“Oh, is that how we’re playing now?”
“Once a gentleman, always one.”
Okay then. If he wants to play dirty, I’ll show him how wild Lemon Winchester can be. I start on my sopping wet button-down, and slowly undo all of the buttons. Then I peel off the wet fabric and let it fall to the floor. It makes a wet splosh against the worn floorboards and I stand there in my jeans and bra. Colt doesn’t turn his eyes away. He studies every inch of me from my toes to my head and everything in between. Those gray eyes bore into me, and I suddenly feel hot in all the places his gaze touches.
I toe off my boots and unfasten the button on my jeans, then I slowly slip them over my hips, thanking the good Lord that I took the time to put on matching bra and panties this morning. What I didn’t count on was how sheer they were. You can see everything through the soft pink lace.
“Jesus,” Colt mutters under his breath and his Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows audibly.
I grab the blanket and wrap it around my shoulders, then I sit on the floor by the fire to watch him undress the rest of the way. Outside, the wind howls and batters the weathered cabin. Inside, the storm is just as fierce.
Colt removes his jeans and his hard-on pushes against the thin, wet fabric of his boxers as he covers himself from view and grabs the blanket to wrap himself in. He sits before the fire, his large frame dwarfing the lower part of his body.
“You know we should huddle together to generate more warmth,” I suggest.
Colt smirks.
“I mean, purely by survival standards, that is.”
“You know what will generate more heat?”
“What?” I wince as the word comes out breathier than I intended, and Colt’s face almost looks pained.
“Whiskey.” He hands the giant bottle to me.
I sigh. Well, he’s not wrong. I press the lip to my mouth and take a hearty gulp. It burns on the way down but the warmth it produces low in my belly slakes the hunger within me. Some of it, anyway.
I hand the bottle back to him and we sit in silence as we eat our granola bars. The wind outside makes me wince and I bite my lip. Colt catches the action and says, “We’ll be okay.”
“I’m more worried about Mama and the boys.”
“They got the cellar. They’ll be fine. They’re more protected than we are.”
“Well now I am worried.” I laugh. Colt shakes his head and hands me the bottle of whiskey. I swallow another mouthful and relish the buzz as the whiskey warms my throat.
“We’ll have to get Wyatt to build us a tornado cellar.”
I chuckle, the whiskey and adrenaline going straight to my head. “How many men do you think he’s brought back here?”
“A few.”
“How safe do you think that mattress is?”
“I’m thinkin’ maybe we might be safer out there with the storm.”
“Poor Wyatt.”
“Poor Wyatt? At least he’s getting laid.”
“Oh, come on. Tell me every single woman who comes through those doors of the B and B aren’t falling all over themselves to spend the night in your cabin?”
“They could fall all over my big, fat cock and I still wouldn’t be interested.”
I shiver at the crassness of his words, liking this dirtier, grown-up side of Colt. “Why wouldn’t you be interested?”
“Because I don’t want just another piece of ass.”
“So, what? You’re just gonna stay single forever?”
“Maybe.”
“That’s kind of sad, isn’t it?”
“You tell me—is it any better than agreeing to marry a man you don’t love?”
I swallow hard and glower. “I never said I didn’t love him.”
“You didn’t have to. I know you when you’re in love, Lemonade. Nothing on God’s green earth could hold you back, yet you skipped town the second things got rough.”
I frown. Is he talking about my ex now or him? Either way, I decide a subject change is in order. “Why didn’t we ever think to restore this shack?”
“Because we didn’t care who we were kissin’ in front of. Everything back then was sweet and wild, and we didn’t even notice we were burning alive.”
I sip the whiskey and pull the blanket tighter around my shoulders, shifting closer to the fire. “Do you ever wonder where we’d be if I hadn’t lost the baby?”
“We.”
“What?”
“If we hadn’t lost her. We both lost her.”
“You don’t know that it was a her.”
“You don’t know she wasn’t.”
I nod and stare into the flames licking at the stone walls of the fireplace.
“And no. I try not to think about what might’ve been. There ain’t no sense in that.”
“I do.” I swallow hard and meet his gaze. “I think about the two of us, what might’ve happened if I hadn’t left you. We’d probably have eight adopted children by now, all just as stubborn as their daddy.”
“Me, stubborn?” He arches a brow, trying to make light of the mood, but there is no making light of us. We were never light. We were fire and heat, and it engulfed us, razed us to the ground. “And what do you mean adopted?”
“Why don’t you think about that?” I frown, changing the subject, wanting more from him than he’s obviously willing to give. “Did your hate for me consume any love you had left?”
“I never hated you, Lemon. God, I never stopped loving you. You left me, and my heart shattered into a hundred-thousand pieces. I didn’t have a hope in hell of putting it back together.”